There’s a rhythm to life that we sometimes forget to notice. We move from one thing to the next — planning, preparing, doing — always focused on what comes next.
But joy doesn’t only live in what we plan. It often shows up quietly, in the spaces between everything else.
A few years ago, I hosted a garden party at my home. It was an informal affair, but I encouraged everyone to dress up. We spent the afternoon outside, visiting and wandering along the path through the field. It was a lovely day — filled with relaxed conversation, exploration, smiles, and food. Everything was beautiful.
But what most of us remember most vividly isn’t anything I had planned for.
It was a little girl.
She couldn’t have been more than three years old — wearing a bonnet and a lovely summer dress, holding a single flower in her hand. She wandered along the path, smiling, completely lost in her own joyful world.
That little girl changed those of us who were watching, noticing. When do we lose that sense of joy — that awe, that wonder?
“Be still, and know that I am God.” — Psalm 46:10
And so now, I take time in my days and weeks for what I call the Sacred Pause. It isn’t something I plan — it just happens. You’ll know when it’s time.
All it really takes is being open to it — not rushing. If you’re in a hurry, you’ll miss it. But if you leave a little early for everything on your schedule, you’ll have the space to notice when the moment arrives. You’ll know when it’s time to just stop… to notice… to experience the joy of what happens next.
As you take the time to pause, you’ll begin to see that there’s far more joy and wonder around you than you may have realized. Become as a child again. Feel awe at this wonderful world around us.
Pause.
It’s such a small word, but it changes everything. When we pause — even for a breath — something shifts inside. The noise softens. Gratitude rises. The heart catches up with the pace of life.
You don’t have to host a party to experience it. You can practice it right where you are:
Pause before you eat and notice the colours on your plate.
Pause before you speak and let your words soften.
Pause in the middle of your day — step outside, feel the air, and look up.
That simple space between moments is where joy likes to live.
Today’s Invitation
Find one moment to pause. Not because you have to, but because you can. Because your soul might be waiting for you right there — in the stillness.
…and yes, the photo at the top of this post is that darling little girl, unposed, experiencing the joy of her walk in our world. What a blessing it was to capture this beautiful moment!
Living with More Joy in the Sacred Pause,
Velvet
If this reflection brought a quiet moment of joy, let’s keep walking this path together — pausing, noticing, and finding wonder in the everyday.
My husband loves space exploration and has been following advancements for years. A couple of years ago, he started talking about it getting close to the time when he will start hearing about space exploration projects that will not come to fruition until after he passes from this world to the next. He is 63, and his father is 91 (and just got married this month). Many of his family members live to their mid-90s, so he still has a few years to go, but space projects also have long lives before the fruits of their labour are realized.
Back here on Earth, I have been gathering food. I have tracked expiry dates for years, but typically, most of the food I buy has a one to two-year shelf life. What I would like is some longer-lasting fruits and veggies, so I have been looking at buying some dehydrated food. A friend of mine called me so we could coordinate our purchases, and during our conversation she off-handedly commented that the food we were buying has a 30-year shelf life.
That evening our purchases were on our shelves.
I checked the dates.
My friend was right.
These items will not expire until 2055.
2055.
That is the year I will celebrate my 90th birthday.
And that was when it dawned on me that some of my food may have a later expiry date than I might.
The thought of these expiry dates is disturbing enough to me that I have determined that I am going to eat the food I just bought and never buy food with that long an expiry date again…
…ever!
with love and laughs, Velvet
Living with more joy and more laughs everyday…especially when it is at my own expense!
If this reflection brought a quiet moment of joy, let’s keep walking this path together — pausing, noticing, and finding wonder in the everyday.
Sometimes there are things we like to do that seem ridiculous to our family and friends. This doesn’t mean they are ridiculous, only that those who have not tried them may judge you because of them.
Let them judge.
There will always be someone judging you.
You need to get to a point that it doesn’t bother you so it does not interfere
with fun adventures that are not actually dangerous, but do bring you joy!
My physical activities of choice are dancing and swimming.
This past year I have been doing both, but the one that gets people excited and worried is my choice to swim.Excited and worried because this past year I continued to go for dipswhen the temperature started to drop.Some people are worried I am making reckless choices.Some worry I am going to get hurt.Some that I am going to get sick.I am doing this to have fun…… not to die.I assess a possible site and then decide if it is a safe location for a dip.On Christmas Day I got into my bathing suit and did not go for a dip.On New Year’s Day I also did not go.Some of my friends went for a dip on New Years Day!And it brought me joy!(as well as sorrow, let’s be honest here, I wanted to go)!And so, when I returned home after the holidays my search was on.A friend told me about a spring fed river near his home.The river was eight degrees Celsius, balmy for January water. January 27th was the day. The air temperature at the river was minus eight degrees Celsius.I went for my dip……and it was wonderful!What most people don’t understand is that the reason you don’t feel cold when you get out of cold water is because your body is hard at work keeping you warm. You do feel a little tingly, but you don’t feel cold. I felt warm all over.I got back into my warm car and drove home a happy dipper.January – done!I am not suggesting you need to go for dips in cold water to make you feel alive, though I do highly recommend it. I have done it this past year because I love the ocean and I love water and this is how I decided to celebrate that love!It doesn’t mean I will do it every month…or every year.It does mean my heart will be open to it.Speaking of my heart…I was not able to do this before 2019 because I have superventricular tachycardia that used to result in even September water causing my heart to flip into tachycardia.So a couple of years ago I finally paid attention to my health and got that fixed.And now I have the freedom to swim, and dip, and dance – all of which I hadn’t been able to do freely for about 20 years.And so now I do what I want……even if it means people think I am weird!As my mother would say, “Who wants to be normal anyway……normal is boring!”Exactly, I could not have said it better myself!Wishing you days and weeks and years of wonderfully outrageous adventures!Love VelvetLiving with More Joy – everyday!In the comments area below please inspire us for our journey through life by sharing your wonderfully outrageous adventures OR some ideas you have for some!
The following poem represents my thoughts on food storage in relation to the wisdom of the women who came before us, the women we are now and the women we can become for the women who come after us. It was published in the literary journal, The Leaf in the Fall of 2014.
and is my Christmas message to everyone. Please read my earlier post to give you the background for this one.
What if our Saviour had a blog?
And what if on that blog He made a post one day about mending. How would his post be different than mine?
Please know that I mean no disrespect in writing this post from an alternate perspective.
“Yesterday was a mending day, and today will be as well. I came to the Earth to mend.
I came to mend everyone.
Send me your mending.
I love mending.
Specifically, mending souls.
Why do I love mending souls?
The answer is in the details.
First thing this morning I mended a wonderful pair of souls whose relationship was damaged because they felt differently about getting a vaccine. I love them both, and they both made mistakes. This morning they both asked me and each other for forgiveness. They asked for my help mending their relationship and their souls. And I did. Except that what I offer is not just mended souls, but souls made new, better than they were before. Their relationship is renewed, their souls are renewed. Their new relationship has the added strength that comes from forgiveness, forgiveness of one another, and my forgiveness. I lovingly stitched them back together. I love these souls and they will love each other better because they have invested time and effort into mending their relationship so they can continue to grow.
Next I mended a soul who had lost hope, a soul sheltered in a body, a body that is sheltered only when a shelter is available. I know that most people don’t see or don’t care for these souls with holes in them, but I do. I wove this soul with the same care I wove you. This soul is worn and broken because of what has happened to it while on this Earth. Despite this soul’s brokenness this soul is wonderfully woven; generous and loving; one who lifts other broken souls and shares everything he has, my peace, my love and my joy. He is there to reach and lift those you will not reach and lift. But this morning he was broken. And so I mended him, through another soul, one who works at a shelter for homeless bodies housing precious souls. I often use souls to help mend other souls.
And this brings me to you. I know your soul is broken. You know your soul is broken. You are carrying a burden you do not have to carry. That is why I came to Earth. You celebrate my birth, you celebrate my Resurrection, but you don’t bring your broken heart to me, your broken soul to me, and let me mend it, let me renew you.
And so today I ask that you try a little experiment, even if you don’t believe in me, or don’t quite believe in me.
Let it go.
Yes I know this is now a song that the whole world sings, but it was a message from me long before now.
Bring me your sins, they do not serve you. Seek forgiveness then give them up. Ask for help if you need to. Let them go.
Bring me your mistakes, stop beating yourself up with them. You have learned from them. Let them go.
Bring me your hurts, I can heal them. Let them go.
Bring me your broken soul and be willing to have it made new.
My Atonement in the Garden of Gethsemane was a gift from me to you,
and everyone else.
My Atonement can make you new,
if you choose to let it.
And here’s the thing,
the repentance process and the ability to forgive others both renew your soul, freeing you from past hurts and sins,
whether you believe in me or not.
Google the process, then follow it.
Give me a mustard seed of faith,
and I will help it grow,
until you do believe in me.
There is one additional thing you need to remember.
When you come to me to be made new,
you also have to forgive yourself,
and believe you are worthy,
believe that you were worth it for me,
that I would have suffered the Atonement for you,
if you were the only soul in the world.
Yes, I love you that much.
I came to heal you, not mend you, to renew you.
Let me heal you.”
__________________________
By choosing to mend us, to make us new, our Saviour has indicated He valuesus enough to do the work required to make us whole again.
And suddenly my resistance to being mended, to being healed, to being made new,
melts away,
and all it took,
was a change in perspective.
May we always remember the reason for this season, that our Saviour Jesus Christ came to save our souls, because he loves us.
Merry Christmas from my soul to yours,
Love Velvet
Living with More Joy everyday, especially when newly mended!
More Joy from mending. Photo Credit: Velvet Rollin. Mitts and Dishtowel. 2021.
December 22, 2021
Yesterday was a mending day, and today will be as well. I only spend a couple of days a year mending and these are it.
I love mending.
Specifically, mending clothes.
And before you offer to send me your mending I will clarify further, I love mending my family’s clothes, immediate family. I can’t believe I have to get that specific, but if you knew my extended family and friends you would understand why I feel the need to get that specific.
Why do I love mending clothes?
The answer is in the details.
The first item I mended was a wonderful pair of red mittens I bought at a craft show back before we knew what a blessing it was to freely wander through such shows looking at the work of artists and finding a place in our lives for their pieces. The wonderful woman I bought these mittens from fashioned them from old sweaters and added a fleece liner. They are the warmest mittens I own. I usually only wear them when I am not working outside, but I must have worn them outside while working because the palm on one mitt was sliced. Yesterday I lovingly stitched the mitt back together. You can no longer see the imperfection unless you look very closely. I now love these mitts even more because I have invested time and effort into them so I can continue to enjoy wearing them.
The second item I mended was a dishtowel. I know that a dishtowel is not a piece of clothing and that most people would throw out a dishtowel with a hole in it, but we do not. Why? Because my husband’s aunt is in her 80s and continues to weave these dishtowels for family members. They are wonderfully absorbent, large dishtowels that we all value highly. Taking care of these wonderful pieces of her art is a privilege. And so yesterday I added a small piece of cloth to the back of the dishtowel and mended it.
The next three items I mended were all pairs of pants belonging to my son. They are brightly coloured and he loves them, and so when he asked if I could mend them for him I said I would. Today I will mend items for my father-in-law, my husband, and a couple more items for myself. It brings me joy to know that my service to my family allows us to keep items that we love and helps our Earth.
Choosing to mend something indicates we value it enough to do the work required to make it as close to whole again as we can. The imperfection is still there, but it has been made stronger so it can survive new challenges.
So, if I love mending our clothes so much, why do I resist being mended?
Well, my friends, that is a conversation for another day, my next blog in fact, because if I went there today you would never get back to what you were doing before you started reading this post.
May you find joy in the details of your life, whether they be what you classify as work, worship or play!
Sunrise at Cavendish Beach, PEI. Photo Credit: Velvet Rollin. September 2021.
tomorrow
now today
sleep did not come
last night
too many yearnings
too many plans
he did not sleep either
i heard him
anger
then weeping
then sorrow
a calm
moonlit night
i yearned to come to him
but knew
i must wait
or he would only suffer more
now
the sun is rising
dawn of a new day
a new chance at love
he is resting
anticipation high
dive gear on
i slip in
of course he notices
but today
he lets me lead
i follow his contours
caress them
in awe
light reflecting
shimmering
apparelled in living
breathing
beauty
i stop
eyes closed
listen again
to his heart
beat
wait
feel his body
as he slips beside me
guides me
our breathing synchronizes again
but my heart
races
today
i can stay
can linger
can breathe
he takes me in
cradles me in his arms
rocks me
back and forth
caresses me
loves me
pulls me closer
i feel myself
slipping into his depths
his world
my world
drinking deeply of his presence
breathing in his love
floating
weightless
no one
but us
one
no limits
no borders
no lies
but one
or two
i cant stay
and it is not love
he is my addiction
just as i am his
i will stay by his borders
and visit
because he has drawn me here
and because
i need him
as much
as he needs me
in chains together
feeling free
yet forever imprisoned
by wanting something
we cannot have
A storm in the distance on the beautiful Northumberland Straight, Prince Edward Island. August 31, 2021. Photo credit: Velvet Rollin
September 18th, 2021
For those of you who wonder why I am so drawn to the ocean I give to you my explanation in the form of the poem I wrote on the subject 15 years ago. I believe there is no better way for me to explain it. I will post my sequel to this poem in my next blog entry. Please note that the formatting works for laptops and tablets, but not for phones. Next step on my learning journey is to learn how to make customized spacing work on all devices.
Dreams of the Ocean. PEI Dune. 2015. Photo Credit: Velvet Rollin
August 29, 2021
The best way I know of to create joy in my life is to do something. In my world it doesn’t even matter what I do as long as I am planning what I am going to do, or doing it. Moving my body is great (motion is lotion). In the last week I have created joy in my life by swimming, kayaking, sewing a purse and a beach bag, harvesting from our garden, and making meals based on our harvest. I have also shared meals and joy-filled times with our friends who have been living with us. It has been a blessing to learn to live with others in a relatively small space (our 1400 ft2 house is now being shared by 6 people instead of 3). Larger projects have included looking for vacant land to build on in Nova Scotia and planning my upcoming trip to Prince Edward Island (I am currently in a hotel and fly out tomorrow morning). Finally, I also attended our Church’s semi-annual Stake Conference. Other activities that might not excite you are attending numerous medical appointments: two dental appointments, a chiropractic appointment and a physiotherapist appointment. My activities have not only met my basic needs for physical, mental and spiritual health, but they have also been interesting and exciting. I am excited about medical appointments because I can finally go and I can get things fixed that need to be fixed. I loved kayaking last weekend, but because we got further than ever before on a river we regularly kayak and I pushed myself too far – a sore hip and shoulder were the result. Physiotherapist appointments are keeping me from surgery and teaching me to heal myself. I am grateful that once again we can go and see medical professionals to help us take care of our bodies.
We have had a lot of salads this year, bean salads, kale salads, kale slaw, cucumber salads, lettuce salads, etc. – all delicious and all the result of garden tending and google searches for great recipes. Thank-you those of you who have food blogs, you keep my family loving our meals.
The purse and beach bag I made this week were both created using fabric I designed by having photos I have taken printed on them. Thanks to the internet and people making their dreams come true by running their businesses online, people like me can either order fabric designed by others, or upload our own designs and have them printed on fabric of our choice for our own projects. In my case I uploaded a classic beach dune photo I took on Prince Edward Island in 2015 to Spoonflower (I get nothing for recommending them, but they do a great job turning my photos into fabric) and created two beach bags with it, one for my girlfriend on her retirement (because we went on that trip together AND during Covid she bought a cottage on Prince Edward Island – she owned it for 10 months before she was able to go there to see it). My purse design was made with a photo of the lilacs that I planted in our yard a few years ago. Lilacs are my favourite flower and so this makes a perfect Spring/Summer purse for me.
What do all of these activities have in common? I had to dream them up before I actually created them. I trusted that I could do what I wanted to do and so, step by step I did them!
Do you know the significance of today? Today is August 29, 2021. That is 9 more big sleeps until my girlfriend Suzie and I do not go back to school. Since the age of 4 there are only 3 first days of school that I have not been in school, two of them were the years between my bachelor’s degree and my teaching degree and the third was when I was on maternity leave after having my second child. September 7th, 2021 will be the fourth. What an exciting countdown!
So, what do we have planned?
Tomorrow I fly to Prince Edward Island. Why there? Well, this is the best part, it is actually an adapted dream, made for our times. For years my girlfriend and I planned on going to a Caribbean country for the start of the school year after we retired. On the first day of school I visualized that we would sit on the beach with a glass of bubbly (non-alcoholic – neither of us drink) and toast everyone going back on the first day of school. We are not making fun of them, nor are we making light of this, we are wishing them well on their journey, a journey we both enjoyed for 30 years! I loved learning and growing with my students and my teachers each year and wish them all the very best. I wish us the best as well and so we will celebrate by spending our day touring the west coast of Prince Edward Island and then spending the night at the West Point Lighthouse Inn! I do not feel we are settling for the East Coast when we had originally planned on going to the Carribean. We cannot live in the world of “might have beens” if we want to be happy. I love the East Coast, as does Suzie. She has a cottage there now, which she did not have when we originally visualized our retirement toast. This will be a wonderful celebration for both of us!
My first wish for you as you move forward in your life, is to do something every day to create joy for your life and for the lives of your family members!
My second wish for you is that you start to observe yourself and all that you are able to do each day that at one time might not have been easy for you. If you can do those things then why not believe in your ability to make your current big dream come true? All journeys begin with one step and I am willing to bet that you have already taken several steps in the direction of your dream by learning things you need to know to be able to go there. Decide today to take your next step on that journey.
First Peach Harvest. August 2021. Photo Credit: Velvet Rollin
I’ve been off course for a bit.
Okay, correction, I have been off social media for a bit and I also haven’t been writing my blog or my book.
Why?
I have been busy living life, mostly unrelated to working towards my writing goals.
These are the big things I have been doing for the last month and a half:
Preparing for my mother’s Celebration of Life, including preparing our maple grove for the spreading of her ashes, creating photoboards, planning a meal and bedrooms for guests, etc.
Preparing and facilitating a workshop for a writers’ retreat.
Digging lots of dirt to deal with an ant problem we have.
Digging lots of dirt to reveal our septic tank lids to get them ready for pumping, then installing caps at ground level so we never have to dig for them again (it only took digging them up once for us to learn that we can live with green lids at ground level – bravo to those of you who had them installed that way).
Releasing lots of personal items to make room for friends moving in with us.
Cleaning and re-organizing our home from top to bottom in preparation for welcoming our friends into what will be our shared home for six months until we go on our mission.
Completing the paperwork for our two year mission, and navigating scheduling and completing medical and dental appointments during Covid restrictions.
Helping to prepare the food for and decorating for my mother-in-law’s Celebration of Life, and then cleaning it up afterwards. Continued meal preparation for guests who travelled far.
Visiting with friends in Quebec and relatives in Eastern Ontario.
Spreading my mother-in-law’s ashes in Northern Quebec as part of a five day houseboat holiday with family.
Travelling back home to pick up our son so he could come with us for the next part of our time away.
Spending the weekend with friends from University to celebrate the retirement of three of us (we were the “older” class members, age 25 and 26 when we graduated instead of 23 or 24). Lots of water and dock time, catching up on each others lives time, laughs, food and drinks, cards and games.
And then back home.
New experience – because we have friends living with us now, there was a wonderful dinner waiting for us when we arrived home from our weekend away! Woohoo! It was delicious and they are amazing!
News flash*** I posted to my blog once in the past six weeks, and it was halfway into our three weeks away.
What happened to all those great habits I was building and the progress I was making before we left?
Nothing.
Not the “Nothing, you blew it Velvet, they are gone and you have to start all over again!” criticism our minds try to inflict on us.
Nothing, meaning, “Nothing happened to those habits.” Those habits didn’t go anywhere, they were waiting for me when life returned to its regular routine.
I admit I was concerned they wouldn’t be there, but they were. Because my newer habits were built into my routine activities [I exercise after I brush my teeth and I write once I have moved forward on a house project (so I don’t feel guilty writing)] when I went back to this routine the exercise and writing naturally fit in again. These additions to my routine feel natural to me now because I have been doing both for over a year and learned to stop asking myself if I “felt like” exercising or writing – I just do them because they are next on my list. My freedom lies in identifying what should be part of my routine, then, to save thinking power and brain drama I just follow my routine each day.
Okay, get real moment: I feel like a fraud even writing the above because although I feel exercise is a strong enough part of my routine to say what I have said, I do not feel like my writing is there yet. So, I’m putting it out there to make it true. I can tell you that it doesn’t work for me to put my writing first because I end up wasting the whole day on my computer, but seldom writing, and getting nowhere on my house goals. When I put a house project first the house moves forward and then I write so I can move forward on my book as well. Feeling good about progress on the house makes it easier to then sit down and make progress on my book as well.
That last paragraph is a great example of your mind getting in the way of your progress on anything. Your mind is your greatest critic and you need to shut the criticism down. This post is the perfect example. I felt I needed a blog post to deal with my mind’s criticism of my progress towards goals.
Velvet’s mind: You have not been keeping up with your writing, I thought you were serious about this goal. You didn’t get it done by the end of June as you planned to and now you aren’t even doing it.
Velvet (getting defensive): It is not as if I wasn’t doing anything, I had lots to do (lists all the items I put at the top of this post).
Velvet’s mind: So what you are saying is that you are letting life get in the way of your writing.
Velvet (I’ve noticed my brain’s criticism for what it is, dropped my defensiveness because there is no need for it, and am now in Velvet teaches her brain mode): Let’s look at this differently. My life is not all about my goal of writing my book. I have a number of goals in my life that I have worked towards and continue to work towards, writing my book is an important goal to me, but not the only one. I set a goal to be close to my family members and I have spent the summer doing a lot of activities to build stronger relationships with family members and express my appreciation for them. I have a goal to spend time with friends to show them I value them, to build our relationships and to enjoy spending time with them. I have a goal to finish some projects on the house, to eat from my garden, to preserve food from my garden and to travel. All of my activities this summer have been related to working towards one or more of these goals. I have done very well in working towards these goals.
Velvet’s brain: “Got it.”
——————————————
My favourite scripture, Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, “To every thing there is a aseason, and a btime to every purpose under the heaven.”
There are so many things I want to do in my life and I use this scripture to help keep me from running faster than I am able.
The last six weeks were a time to celebrate the lives of and express appreciation for my amazing mother and wonderful mother-in-law, to support my family members as we grieved together, and to continue to strengthen my relationships with those around me – family and friends. These activities fed my soul and make it possible for me to continue to move towards all of my goals, including writing.
Today I have strengthened my relationship with my son by playing Magic with him, looked after my personal health by doing some exercises my physiotherapist has told me I need to do, hung up two loads of laundry on our clothesline, and written this blog. I have harvested fresh vegetables from the garden for our dinner (summer tomatoes are the best!), looked up a couple of recipes for dinner, and then enjoyed the company of my amazing family and friends as we prepared, ate and cleaned up from dinner. Tonight I will check on the peaches on our peach tree (we are excitedly anticipating our first harvest of peaches) and read a European travel book in hopes we can go later this fall.
So much to look forward to when from the outside it looks like life is getting in the way!
I love doing laundry!
I love gardening!
I love making food I enjoy, especially toasted tomato sandwiches in the summertime!
I love both working and playing with family and friends!
Life does not get in the way of any goal!
Life is the way to every goal!
When you value what you have chosen for your life each part of that journey can be appreciated, valued and enjoyed! If you do not feel that way about parts of your journey yet, transform those activities so you do experience joy while doing them.
And remember, you are never really off course when you are taking a detour to look after yourself and other goals you have for your life.
Plan activities that allow you to move your body in ways you love while you are on vacation. Raymond snorkelling in Mexico. 2008. Photo credit: Velvet Rollin
July 27, 2021
You may or may not have heard the phrase ‘Motion is Lotion’ referring to how movement helps your body lubricate your joints so movement is easier. Movement also helps with circulation and maintaining your muscles. Oh no I can hear you say, this post isn’t going to be about exercise is it?
No, it is about movement.
How do I like moving?
I love playing volleyball so it brings me great joy when a group of us get together to play. As we get older we laugh more as we play as well. It is rare that I play volleyball anymore so I consider it a treat.
I love swimming and so in Canada summer’s warmer weather provides that opportunity. I have gone in the water both later and earlier in the year, but those are mostly quick dips that shock my body and not full swims. When we travel to warm destinations we plan our trips so we can regularly swim and snorkel in warm ocean waters. A stop on Isla Holbox in Mexico included a memorable tour to see the whale sharks and snorkel alongside them. I highly recommend planning activities that allow you to move your body in ways you love while you are on vacation.
I love dancing so for my heart and lungs I either dance or do high intensity interval training to great dance music. This is my daily movement activity of choice.
I like walking, have bought great hiking shoes and live on a wonderful property in the middle of nowhere so this is my second movement activity of choice.
On our property we have both field and forest.
Walking through the field and the forest both bring my husband and I joy, but differently.
Walks through the field bring us joy as we stroke our pine trees and say hello to them. We do this because on a 49 acre property we have fewer than 20 pine trees. There used to be a porcupine on our property who loved our pine trees. It was great for her/him, not so great for them. While she/he was here our pine tree population was decreased to two, and one of those had been girdled. That tree survived and it has taken 15 years for our pines to begin to re-establish themselves. I like to think that our encouragement and love have helped.
Then there are the flowers. The colour of our field changes with the months of the year and from year to year. We used to have lots of Brown-eyed Susans, for the last two years we have had none. We love the smell of our Valerian, but are concerned with its invasiveness. Last year we had only a couple of milkweed plants for our Monarch butterflies, this year we have milkweed everywhere and therefore many more Monarchs – yay! We always have a large variety of purple wildflowers including vetch, lots of yellows including buttercups, and lots of whites including a wild baby’s breath. Finally, we have enjoyed watching as our trees have moved into the field. We have been mowing a path through our field for years. When we started there were no trees close to the path and only a couple of trees further in the field. We also only had ferns in one area of the field. Now our path is surrounded by trees on both sides of it and we have ferns in three areas. Many years we have also been blessed to have giant puffballs in late summer to early fall. That is when we have a meal of mushroom steaks that if left whole would be larger than our frypan! What a blessing.
In the animal department we enjoy watching hawks ride the afternoon updrafts, rabbits eating clover and our other wildflowers or come and investigate us, red efts, red squirrels, chipmunks, wild turkeys sauntering across the field on their way from here to there, deer playing, fox and coyote hunting voles and other small creatures, snakes enjoying the heat of summer, praying mantis, crickets, grasshoppers, voles, moles, and many other insects. Lately we have been using an app to identify the birds we listen to each day. What a blessing technology can be! We have lived here for 20 years now and have just learned the names of all the birds we hear singing. They include Blue Jays, various sparrows, warblers, wrens, ravens, Kingbirds, bald eagles, Vireo, Eastern Meadowlarks, waterthrushes, ovenbirds and a pileated woodpecker.
In our forest we enjoy the many mosses, fungi and plants on the forest floor, the insects and small animals we come across, listening to the birds singing, and of course walking among the trees, it is so peaceful.
This past Spring we started clearing out the dead material from up to 40’ of the cedar woods on the South side of our driveway. I started doing this work during my morning exercise routine, between high intensity intervals of movement. I cut dead branches and gathered fallen ones. Later we removed them and used them to fill holes elsewhere on our property. This movement became a favoured activity for myself because it was movement with a purpose. Yves and I continued this activity until the plants on the forest floor started coming up.
I also love the movement that comes from gardening. Often Yves and I weed while we are on the phone so we are focused on our conversations instead of completing a chore that is often not viewed as enjoyable in and of itself. Now that we have raised bed gardens I don’t actually mind weeding because it does not take very long anymore (meaning about an hour a week).
Movement is good for our body, but it is not always something we enjoy doing. It took me years to ensure I invested time each day to moving my body. For me the key was identifying activities I love to do and incorporating those activities into my life. Movement would not work for me any other way, if I do not enjoy doing it, I won’t do it, so I work hard to make sure I do activities that bring me joy.
My challenge to you this week if you are not already moving regularly, is to make a list of activities you enjoy doing that involve movement. How can you incorporate those activities into your life so your body can serve you the way you need it to? Commit to doing something each day to get your body moving. I highly recommend dancing to your favourite music – music lifts my Spirit as I move my body and I am sure it can do the same for you!
One prayer sock. 2021. Photo Credit: Velvet Rollin
Dear mom,
Thank-you for visiting me in my dreams this morning, it meant a lot. As usual we were laughing, we were always laughing! I know you have only been gone for a week and a half, but I miss you. I thought I was ready to say goodbye, but it appears I was not. I used to call you to check in, and I know I can just talk to you now, but in the absence of your feedback I have decided it would be easier to write you letters.
Today I want to tell you about my one prayer sock.
Yes I am writing you a letter about one prayer sock.
Why?
Because I cannot find the other.
A few years ago as a sister ministering to other sisters in my Church I challenged my Church sisters to knit or crochet a simple cotton dishcloth for a sister who they did not know well, and to pray for and think of that sister while they were making their cloth. Those who participated in this challenge learned a lot, about themselves, about prayer, about knitting, about giving, and about receiving. We learned more about the love our Heavenly Father and our Saviour has for us. Our experiences, our shared experiences, brought us both pain and joy, in short it changed our perspective and it changed our lives – the lives of those who did the work, the lives of those who served. Our hearts became “knit together in unity.” I do not know if it changed the lives of those we gave them to, but I suspect not. They likely just thought it was a little weird to receive a homemade dishcloth from someone they did not know very well.
You were so kind when you were alive not to ask about my convoluted stories, but at this point you are likely thinking, “Wait a minute, that story was not about a prayer sock, what does a dishcloth have to do with a prayer sock?”
I’ll get there mom.
In 2020 I bought prayer socks for a small group of friends and I. Because of Covid-19 we could not be physically present for one another, but by wearing our socks on the same day we could spiritually be together: praying in the morning, and then on our feet with a prayer in our heart for one another all day. This worked very well for us as a small group, we felt as one, “knit together in unity”, just as the sisters who had knit a dishcloth did. So when I was asked to serve a larger group of women at my Church I asked all of our sisters to identify a pair of socks as their prayer socks. I also asked that whenever we have a call for prayer for sisters or families in need, that we wear our socks that day, say a prayer in the morning and then keep a prayer in our heart for our sisters and their families all day. That was in January 2021. Prayer, and our prayer socks are making a positive difference in our collective lives, in the lives of those doing the praying, and in the lives of those we are praying for.
My close friends and I were praying for you since you became palliative in November. We have been praying for others as well, and regularly. We have been wearing our socks so much that one close friend of mine has worn hers out!
I know, I know, “This is still not about one prayer sock Velvet!”
“You know that no story I ever tell is short mom. You also know however, that every story has a point and a lesson.”
Now I can Zoom in to the ‘one prayer sock’.
One of my prayer socks disappeared after you passed away a week and a half ago. Not that day, or the next day, but about a week later. I had two prayer socks while I was at Cathy’s. When I got home I put them in the laundry. Then I hung them on the clothesline. I am certain I had two prayer socks only because I hang my socks in pairs and did not take notice that I was hanging up only one sock…I do notice those things. When I took the laundry down there was only one prayer sock. One.
It was a windy day so as with other windy days I searched the area for the missing sock. I have done this for other laundry items over the years, it is fun, a real life ‘hide and seek’ or ‘I spy’ game…”What filled that gap in the clothes line?” “What colour is it?” “Which way is the wind blowing, where might it have flown to?” “Can you see the orange sock among the brown Spring grass?” Or perhaps it never made it to the laundry and the questions become, “Where was I when I last saw these two socks together?” “When did I notice I only had one sock?” “Where was I in between?”
Keep in mind that at our home when we look for missing items off the line we travel far because the wind is strong. I chased my clothes basket over 100 feet this afternoon because I left it unsupervised to pick up two items from the ground. It may have enjoyed its tumble, but it wasn’t gone for long.
No sock was found outside, or inside, or in the car, or my purse…yes I sometimes put socks in my purse mom. I am no longer committed to wearing socks all the time because removing them is part of my temperature regulation at this stage of my life. As a result socks and clothes end up in places I never would have put them when I was cold all the time.
Still one prayer sock.
Well mom, nothing in life is ever a co-incidence, I have learned that. Whether my prayer sock is missing for a few weeks or for life there is a lesson in it for me. How do I know? Because in my life there are lessons in everything that happens. Why? Because I am open to lessons.
So what is my lesson?
So here is where I sometimes feel as if I learn slowly. Even though my life is filled with lessons it did not dawn on me until this morning…a week after the sock went missing, that there might be a lesson in this experience for me. Why, because I was still looking for the sock; in my mind I had not yet let go of the sock.
Now, I am moving on.
“What do I do about the sock that is left?”
“What do I do about my prayer socks?”
…and then my brain began to percolate.
Does one prayer sock mean I need to get down on my knees more?
Does it mean I need to be on my feet less?
Does it mean “do”ing less and “be”ing more?
Does it mean I need more balance?
I have decided it means all of those things and whatever else I decide it means for my life. I have also decided that I don’t need a “pair” of matching socks to be my prayer socks. I chose the socks I did as my prayer socks because they stand for our uniqueness and importance in God’s eyes and in the eyes of our families and friends. Having a pair that doesn’t match makes me even more unique (yes language police, I did that on purpose). I have decided to embrace having a mismatched pair of prayer socks because that is okay too. I do not need to go out and buy another pair of socks, I have enough. That last sentence refers to the lesson I learned this morning BEFORE I learned the lesson my One Prayer Sock taught me…as a matter of fact that lesson led to this lesson…
…but I will save that lesson for another day!
So mom, I have two prayer socks again, and I have written you my first letter since you passed, a letter that means something to me, and hopefully to you.
I love you mom, and I miss you dearly! I spent my morning crying for joy that you were with me in my dreams, and this afternoon and evening crying because you are not with me now.
Oh, and mom, if you took my sock, you can bring it back now, I learned my lesson. Or alternatively you can deliver it to someone who needs the love and unity prayer socks bring.
Memories of Oma’s Butter Dish. 2021. Photo credit: Velvet Rollin
Many years ago I bought a butter dish in a thrift store because it reminded me of the butter dish my oma had when I was growing up. It is round, which works well for butter sliced from a 1 lb butter block, the way we buy butter in Canada. But the inside base of this butter dish is made of glass, which easily slides off the aluminium outer base, crashes to the floor and breaks. Hence this butter dish has brought me joy and sorrow, and many adventures in thrift stores looking for a replacement base. The glass base thus became a regular item on my thrift store shopping list so I would have a replacement ready when the next one broke.
Why a Broken Butter Dish Club?
As a parent we do what we have to in order to help our children cope with the big and little crises in their lives. The Broken Butter Dish Club was born out of one of these moments of crisis. I had already broken the glass base of the butter dish at least twice and my oldest son had broken it once. My youngest son was helping us set the table and took the butter dish out of the cupboard. The butter dish was higher than he was so he tilted it as he took it off the shelf. The glass dish slid off the aluminium base and smashed on the concrete floor. Concrete is unforgiving so when you build a home with concrete floors you need to be prepared to lose fragile objects when they fall. If you are not prepared for loss, don’t choose concrete.
I was there when the dish broke and my son’s face told me all I needed to know about how he was feeling about it. This was a huge deal for my little guy! Besides feeling bad for breaking the dish, he was likely a little afraid he would get in trouble. He may not have remembered that his brother and I had previously broken the glass base of the butter dish and that I usually had a back up. I thank my Heavenly Father for the inspiration that came to me in that moment, for it was in that moment the Broken Butter Dish Club was born.
“Welcome to the Broken Butter Dish Club,” I said. Then I reminded him that he was not the first to break the glass butter dish, nor was he likely to be the last. His body relaxed. He still needed to work through what had happened, and he was still a little sad, but he was able to help me clean up the mess by vacuuming the glass that was left after I did a preliminary pick up. When we were finished I took out the next glass base, showed it to him, wiped it, and put it in the butter cupboard. Crisis averted.
We can’t always make ourselves or our children feel better when a true crisis occurs or when a challenging event happens, but the sooner we learn to treat objects like objects and focus on choosing actions that build loving relationships with family members and friends, the sooner we will be able to respond in loving ways “in the moment” to lessen the impact of those challenges. We are the example our children follow so learning to let go benefits both us and our children.
There came a time that I could no longer find replacement bases for my glass butter dish so I have replaced it with a rectangular one. This butter dish is stainless steel and fits the ¼ lb butter blocks I have more commonly seen in the United States than here. It works and has never brought me sorrow, but then it doesn’t bring me joy either, interesting how that works. Our joy is as great as was our sorrow. It is “just a butter dish” and that is fine, because that is what it is supposed to be.
My glass butter dish now sits on a high shelf in a kitchen cupboard and brings me joy whenever I look up and see it. In the aluminium base sits my last glass dish and as I think of it sitting there I wonder who will be the one to break it? Will it be me because I am likely to be the one at the top of the cupboard taking out another little used kitchen tool, or when I ask my husband to get something off that high shelf, will he pick up the butter dish only to watch in horror as the glass dish slides off the base and crashes to the floor? When that day comes, if it is my husband who breaks it, I will welcome him into the Broken Butter Dish Club with open arms and our Club will be complete, we will finally all be members.
Velvet
Living with More Joy, even when the butter dish breaks
Do you have a similar story or a different strategy you have used to help your children get through challenges in their lives? If so please share it in the comments area.
Memories of grandma’s china. 2021. Photo by Velvet Rollin
Your Cup of Joy
Think of your favourite container for holding fluid to drink. It could be a tea cup, a mug, a glass or your favourite water bottle or insulated travel mug. Whatever that container is, when you choose to put something in it that starts your day off right it becomes a cup of joy. I add herbal tea to my water and that starts my day off right.
This week, consider creating a different type of Cup of Joy. For this Cup of Joy you need to gather a cup that has personal meaning to you, but that you don’t use very often. My favourite cup in this category is a teacup I bought at a yard sale years ago because it reminded me of the dishes my grandmother had when I was growing up. Once you have your cup, and a saucer or plate for beneath it, place it where you will pass by it often.
Treasure Hunting
Now it’s time for a treasure hunt. Search your home for small items that bring you joy – mine includes a small rock, glass gems, marbles, beach glass, a small bit of soft yarn, dried flower petals, shells, a small wooden shoe and some paper stars I made years ago. As you find each item, place it in the saucer at the base of your cup. Each time you pass by your Cup of Joy consider if you are experiencing joy; if you are, move an item from the saucer to the cup. Aim to fill your cup by the end of the week.
Strategies for Filling Your Cup
If you are finding your cup is not being filled it is time to look back at your Inventory of Joy and start doing those activities again. If you are not experiencing joy each day you need to do something to bring joy into your life, to help you appreciate all of your blessings: wear a favourite sweater, sit in the shade of a large tree, make a meal that reminds you of your home growing up, help a neighbour, provide dinner to someone who is homeless.
Hard Times
There are times in our lives when joy may be hard to experience. I lost both my mother-in-law and mother in less than six weeks this past winter. I did not have difficulty experiencing joy when I was with them, even though I knew each of them was close to passing. When we are with family members near the end of their time on this side of the veil, we can experience some of our most treasured moments with them. As my mom neared her passing I was blessed to be able to cream her body for her to relieve the itching that overwhelmed her, it was a sacred experience and it brought me joy. We also shared many of her favourite meals and reminisced about the past.
Once both my mother-in-law and my mother passed, it was more difficult to feel joy, but I did. My mother-in-law suffered from Alzheimer’s and the end of that disease is so bad that death comes as a relief from their suffering. My mom was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at the age of 28. In later years my mom became diabetic and in the last ten years she had only one kidney that worked at all and it functioned at less than 50%. My mom was 73 when she passed. She was a great mother and grandmother, made a positive difference in the lives of Canadians with disabilities and won many awards, including the Order of Ontario, for her volunteer work. She had many friends and lived a great life. I know that both my mother-in-law and my mother are in a better place, and my mother is dancing again. How could I not feel joy when I know this, when I trust in the Lord and His promises? Yes I am sad for those of us left on this side of the veil, but I also know that someday I will be with her again so I am not that sad, I just miss her. My long distance calls are a little bit further now.
Joy is not happiness, it is a deeper, internal peace that comes with faith. It does not mean that everything in your life is going your way, it just means that you trust in the process, you have faith that every experience will be for your good; that you know your Heavenly Father is watching over you, loves you and is with you as you go through all those tough times in your life as well as all your good times.
And our joy will be as exquisite as was our sorrow. This I know.
For fifteen minutes I read in the shade of her wisteria covered pergola, deeply inhaling the lilac scented air wafting my way. Photo by Olya Kobruseva on Pexels.com
I have been going to a chiropractor for a few years now as part of my goal to take care of my body. Recently that activity brought with it an unexpected moment of bliss. While I was travelling to my appointment I made arrangements to visit a friend who also had an appointment in that small town. She lives about 10 minutes from that town so we arranged to meet in her backyard at a distance after our appointments. I arrived at her home before she did so I grabbed my book and headed to her backyard.
For fifteen minutes I read in the shade of her wisteria covered pergola, deeply inhaling the lilac scented air wafting my way.
It was heavenly,
a moment of bliss!
My friend and I had a lovely visit. Due to present circumstances, we haven’t seen each other since last summer and it was long overdue. I miss being able to visit with friends. I miss our lingering hugs. Last week, on a Zoom visit, another friend shared that when this is over her son is going to hug people until he can feel the other person’s heart beating. That is the perfect description of the kind of hug I want to give and receive again.
In the past we may have taken our visits with friends and family for granted. I tried not to take them for granted, but I have noticed that when I have seen them over the past year, we feel a greater pull than ever to linger in our hugs. This is such a hard time for many due to the scarcity of human touch. Some of the greatest challenges people with disabilities and older adults feel during “normal” times is the lack of touch by others. That scarcity of touch has been made so much worse by the pandemic. One of the most intimate services I provided to my mom in her last days was when I would “cream her up”, spreading cream on her body to relieve dryness and itching. It was a loving touch that blessed my life as much as it did hers. I also brought her favourite meals and chocolate. We shared many wonderful moments together, not only in her last days, but especially in her last days.
Bliss is often connected with our senses. My moment of bliss under the wisteria vine was a moment of synchronicity for me because my day went very differently than what I had planned. I had planned to drop some papers off where I used to work before I retired, but no one was there. I called someone who worked there, and she was at home. Her home was on my way to my appointment, but she had an appointment earlier than mine. I was able to change my appointment time. I arrived at her home before she did, and thus I had my blissful moment. What a wonderful gift!
In winter I used to have a sweater that I called “my happy place”, a gift from my in-laws. It was a very soft sweater that I wore in the winter when I wanted to be home by the fire but had to go out. That sweater became my happy place because it represented where I wanted to be. Putting it on eased my mind and wearing it provided me with moments of joy in my day. I define joy as “not quite bliss”. Sitting by the fire and drinking hot chocolate is an easy moment of joy creator for me on cold winter days and sometimes these moments of joy become moments of bliss.
So what transforms a moment of joy into a moment of bliss? For me it is a moment of joy during which I take a deep breath and feel that “all is right with the world”.
It is my state of mind in the moment that makes the difference. Okay, so here’s the back story on all that I have described above. I have a mind that works overtime and that used to perseverate over stupid mistakes that I had made. I had nightmares about one particular mistake for over 20 years because I had not forgiven myself for it. Peace only came to me when I forgave myself and moved on. Over time I have made two changes in my life to decrease negative experiences, I have worked hard to not make stupid mistakes and I have worked hard not to be too hard on myself when I do. I forgive myself, learn from my mistakes and move on. None of us are perfect, but we can all learn from our mistakes, forgive ourselves and move on. I experience more joy, and more bliss because I have learned to let go of negative experiences and move on. I know that this is what God would want for all of us, we were made for joy.
What blissful experiences have you had in your life? Share one of them in the comments below.
What brings you joy or bliss? Make a list, and then do an item from your list each day. Finally, reflect on how well your days go when you make room in them for bliss. If you want to take this further have your family members do this activity as well, then share your answers with one another. Perhaps as a family you could build in room for everyone to experience a little joy or bliss each day – how great would that life be?
Velvet
Making room for bliss in my life, one day at a time
Where is the path we are creating with our decisions going? Do we need to make different choices so we reach our goals? Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
May 22, 2021
Our choices create the path to our future. Knowing this, are our current choices creating the path to where we want to go or have we created a detour? Just as we sometimes need to recenter after zooming in or out when using Google maps, sometimes we forget where we are in relation to where we are going in life or towards a goal and we need to recenter.
I used to choose not to make medical appointments to take care of my body, reasoning that I didn’t have the time. Those choices affected my health. Six years before I retired I suffered an injury and was forced to start taking care of myself. A year before I retired I underwent a long overdue heart procedure so that I could exercise and release the weight I had steadily gathered over the previous 25 years. My goal was to release the weight and get in shape before I retired so that I could walk long distances. When do we typically walk long distances? When we travel. I underwent the procedure in July of 2019. My planned retirement date was July of 2020.
Why the terms gathered and released instead of gained and lost?
I have not found a term I like better than gathered yet. Gain is used as a positive term, but most of the time in relation to weight it is not something we wish to do. Lost is a term that is often connected to the term found. I do not want to gain weight and I do not want to find it again either. I would rather release the weight.
The procedure I underwent was successful and most of the issues went away. A minor issue remains, but it does not keep me from exercising. In June of 2019 I changed the way I ate and in October 2019 I started intermittant fasting to release weight and started High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) to increase my heart health. Between June 2019 and March 2020 I released 17 pounds. Between March 2020 and November 2020 I released another 15 pounds. Then I retired to care for my mother and mother-in-law, decreased my fasting and gathered 10 pounds back. Between March and May 2021 I released 6 of the 10 lbs I had regathered. It is now July 2021 and I have released all of the weight I regathered and one more pound to boot. I have 6 pounds left to release to reach my final goal. I know from experience releasing it could be slow or quick. I have learned more recently that I release more weight when I am working towards life dreams (currently that means writing my book) and when I stop worrying about the details because “God’s got it!”
I have learned a number of things from this health journey:
You know that feeling you get when you haven’t eaten for a few hours, that hungry feeling? I have learned that the hungry feeling does not get worse the longer I fast. It is always there in the background, but it doesn’t get worse. I fast for 20 hours each day. I found it comforting that I didn’t feel more hungry as the day went on and I have made peace with that hungry feeling, it is not an enemy to me or my body.
When I fast I am not “starving” my body. My body will continue to meet its energy needs by burning fat and that is exacty what I want it to do. This mindset change made a huge difference to me.
I can do all sorts of physical activity while I am fasting. I do cardio exercises right after I get dressed in the morning. I do physical work in the morning. I eat at 4pm. The only time I really need to watch the intensity of my physical activity is after 1pm, before that I am fine.
Overall, I am less tired now than I used to be. I do not know if that is because I am more fit, because I weigh less or because I eat less. It does not matter to me why. I love my afternoon naps, but I am also fine with feeling less of a need for them.
Fasting and exercising have become part of my daily routine, they are no longer decisions I make anew each day. When I switched to making the commitment to these practices up front and building them as habits connected to other habits (I exercise right after I get dressed in the morning) they became automatic and I stopped asking myself if I was going to do them that day, I just did them. The number thrown around most often is that it takes 21 days to make a new activity a habit. In my case it took over a year to finally stop asking myself if I was going to exercise today and a year and a half before I stopped asking myself if I was going to fast today. I do wish I had learned this lesson sooner, but at least I am now applying this thinking to other decisions I make for my life so I can incorporate those practices sooner than I did these ones.
So how does this learning relate to reaching goals we have for our lives?
In my case releasing weight and getting fit were goals I had made to prepare for my retirement. Our plans were to travel. We travel light, carry-on baggage only, and do lots of walking. That means being fit. One day we will travel again and I will be ready.
In relation to other goals you have for your life you will also have to make those up front decisions that help you move towards your goals one step at a time. Make the decision today to work on a piece of your goal every week. Work hard to find a current habit to attach it to and be specific. A couple of examples are, “On Sunday evenings after we clean up from dinner we will review our progress towards our goal from this past week, then set our goal for what we will achieve in the coming week” or “On Monday mornings after the kids have started school I will work on the next step of my goal.”
That is your decision point, you will never have to make that decision again. Block out time for your activity in your dayplanner each week. Make a list of what needs to be done for your next step and beside each block of time write down an item from your list so you know what you are going to do during that block of time. The final thing you need to do is create a visual reminder and place it near the current habit so you don’t forget to do this new activity. After a few weeks you won’t need the reminder anymore and you can remove it. Remember that when you read that reminder you are not making a decision to do that activity because you already made your decision, what you are doing is simply reminding yourself that it is time to do that activity next.
Our choices create the path to our immediate and further out futures so lets make sure the path we are creating is leading to the future we want for ourselves!
Velvet
Making the choices I need to in order to live with More Joy everyday
The greatest rewards of climbing a mountain are the thrill of getting to the top, and the view! The greatest rewards of reaching a goal are the thrill of getting there, and seeing all the other goals you can go for that you hadn’t seen before. View from the top of the Skyline Trail. Photo Credit: Velvet Rollin. 2008.
May 15, 2021
Have you ever climbed a mountain?
A mountain looks like it is very hard to climb, but most people climb multiple sets of stairs a day at a steeper slope than most mountain trails. The difference is the size of the chunk you choose to climb. If you are a beginner like me most of the time when you choose to climb a mountain you choose a small one and you choose to climb up and down the mountain in the same day. That is a lot of work in one day and if you haven’t been preparing ahead of time it can result in a lot of back talk from your mind and a lot of pain in your body. If you have done this you know that as you are climbing your mind constantly attacks you telling you that you can’t do it. When this happens you can choose to: ignore it, distract yourself from it, learn from it, make peace with it, use it to motivate you to keep pushing yourself to the top or listen to it and stop climbing. Some of those decisions lead to the success of your climb, others lead to disappointment. Disappointment is not failure unless you don’t learn from it. The lesson you learn might simply be that you don’t like mountain climbing and won’t do it again. That is okay, that is a legitimate lesson which means you won’t regret turning around before reaching the top.
Of course when you are injured or the climb becomes unsafe the decision becomes less about choice and more about safety so you can return another time to try again.
Climbing mountains towards goals will require as much perseverance as climbing a mountain, perhaps more because of the extended period of time the climb will take and therefore the longer period of time your mind has to attack your efforts. It might say things such as:
“This is too hard, you can’t do it.”
“What do you mean you are going to quit your job to go for your dream, how are we going to eat and pay our bills?”
“You aren’t talented enough for that dream.”
“Who do you think you are, you don’t have the expertise to do that?”
The great thing about working towards the goals you have for your life is that you do it little chunk of mountain at a time. Little chunks of mountains are just stairs. Most of us climb stairs everyday, nothing new, nothing scary.
I am committed to taking at least one step a day towards a life goal.
But I also limit myself, even though on some days I get excited and it is hard to stop.
Why?
Because I am old enough, and wise enough to have learned that for me, slow and steady wins the race. It is the only thing that ALWAYS has – for me. I am not saying that there are not people out in the world who can sprint for long distances, only that I am not one of them. I am more of a marathoner, a very slow marathoner. I have tried sprinting. When I sprint I end up leaving the race, goal in the dirt until, perhaps years later (yes years), I pick up the pieces of my goal, dust them off and try again.
My husband and I have built our dream home, one step at a time.
We have built our dream life, one step at a time.
And now we are working towards new goals, all, one step at a time,
We haven’t abandoned any goals we work towards in this way.
I now prefer to call our journeys adventures,
and we are not climbing mountains, we are walking along the shore.
Why a shore?
Because I love the water and beaches and walking along shorelines. Shorelines offer variety in what you will face, without the scariness that mountains present to people.
Well, there are storms, but we will encounter storms in life no matter where we are and whether or not we are working towards life goals.
So if you have an audacious goal that you want to work towards, please follow me, and invite others you know who want to work towards their dreams to join us. We are about to go on the adventure of a lifetime together, and then another one, and another one. If life has been boring for you – it will be boring no more – boring is banished! If it takes ten years to make your dream come true is that too long? Consider what life will be like for you in ten years if you work towards your dream. Then consider what life will be like for you if you don’t work towards your dream. In ten years, you will still be ten years older, but in one case you will be that much closer to what you want for your life, or already have it, in the other case you will not, and will likely regret it.
God planted your dreams in your heart and wants you to succeed. Take a step, God is with you, and many of us are here supporting you, cheering you on.
I can tell you from my own experience in working toward my dreams that I have NEVER, not once, regretted going for my dreams. Even when things were not going according to plan my husband and I figured out solutions to the challenges we faced. You will be able to do the same.
Have faith in yourself, you can do this and you will create more joy for your life as you journey toward your dreams!
Join me and take that next step towards your dream life!
Working towards your dreams is similar to scaling up a small dinner party to a larger, formal dinner – you have many of the skills you need, you just need to do additional planning, build on the skills you already have, and likely learn one or two more. Photo by Rachel Claire on Pexels.com
May 7, 2021
Last week I shared with you the process most of us go through to get dinner on the table each evening and I stated that this same process can be applied to working towards one of your dreams.
I lied.
Actually I didn’t lie, the process is the same, but the organization, skills and work required is greater.
But that should not come as a surprise.
Let me help you visualize the difference.
Every day you use a process, or a series of steps to plan for your dinner. You’ve been doing it so long you feel fairly confident about your skills. Your family and friends love your cooking and you find it tasty as well.
Then your best friend asks you to prepare the food for her wedding reception dinner.
She will have 100 guests.
You have 6 months.
Her hall is booked and it has a full commercial kitchen which you can use both all day Friday and Saturday, the day of the wedding.
How are you feeling?
Well, if you are like me you would have to take a few deep breaths.
Of course you are going to say yes, she is your best friend and you have the skills.
Which is to say you have many of the skills you will need, not all of them.
The first thing you will need to do is find out what your best friend’s vision for her wedding dinner is. The best way to find this out is to ask her, let her describe it to you and then ask a lot of clarifying questions. You also need to find out her budget, how much she is expecting to spend per person for the dinner. Find out if she will be asking someone else to look after decorations, dinnerware, serving and clean-up so you know exactly what you will be responsible for.
Once you have some details regarding what you are going to be doing, then you need to do an assessment of what skills will be needed to complete this task, which skills you already have and which skills you don’t have.
Next you will need to decide whether you wish to approach another friend with some or all of the skills you don’t have so that they can complete the pieces of the task you are less comfortable with. If you decide to do it yourself you will need to figure out how you are going to learn the skills you don’t have.
In our example lets say that your friend has someone else looking after the decorating and has hired a company to provide the dishes and take away the dirty ones, but you will have to hire a team to help prepare the food, cater the event, set the tables, serve the food and clean up.
For dinner your friend would like to offer guests their choice of steak, chicken or portobello fajitas served with black beans and rice. You are very familiar with fajitas as you make chicken fajitas often. You don’t know how to cook steak and you have never made black beans and rice, but it sounds easy. The three biggest challenges with the menu for you will be the steak, the black beans and rice, and knowing how much food to make for 100 people.
The biggest challenges for you related to getting dinner on the table for everyone is that you don’t have experience making dinner for more than twenty people and you have never managed a staff before.
Is this dinner within your ability to pull off successfully? You determine that yes it is. You are glad you have six months to get ready though, because you will need it.
There are some big steps to complete for the organization and execution of this dinner, and many little steps required to reach each of these big steps. I highly recommend you take one of the big steps for this wedding dinner, and break it down into all the little steps you would need to take to complete that big step. Think of it as one of your first steps to planning for your own audacious life goal.
I hope this helped you not only understand a little bit about the process for planning for an audacious goal, but also feel less intimidated about it and believe in your ability to get there.
Are you ready to visualize your own audacious dream?
Great. Please go to my post titled, “Your Joy-Filled Life” to learn how.
Next week I’ll give you some tips to help make reaching your audacious goal even easier.
You can make your dreams come true using the same process you use to make dinner every evening. Buddha bowl. Photo credit: Velvet Rollin. March 20, 2020.
April 30, 2021
How do you reach any goal? First you visualize it, then you break it down into steps, and then you complete each step.
If this concept scares you may I remind you that you already do this every day. Think of what you do for dinner each night. What steps do you take to ensure you get something to eat? First, the thought of dinner crosses your mind, hopefully earlier rather than later in the day. You likely reflect on your energy levels and then, perhaps, look to see what fresh food you have that needs to be used up. Then you likely decide on the strategies you will use to get dinner on the table. If you are feeling down or have little energy you may consider these three options:
– get something out of the freezer that is simpler to make than a full home cooked meal
– make something that requires little preparation and creates few dishes to wash (toasted tomato and avocado sandwiches are a favourite of mine in this category)
– order something from a local restaurant if you live near one (which I don’t).
If you have more energy you likely look at your fresh food to see what needs to be eaten before it goes bad.
Then comes the fun – if you choose to have fun, which I always do.
What should you make with these ingredients?
I still have recipe books, but more often than not nowadays I choose adventure and use the internet. I have 8 sweet peppers to use in the next couple of days so yesterday I searched for “recipes with sweet peppers”. One of my top results was, “45 of our favourite sweet pepper recipes”, I love results like that. I scrolled through those ideas and found 8 delicious recipes for my family, 2 of which are on the menu for tonight – roasted red pepper triangles and roasted pepper potato soup w lemon and cilantro. Tomorrow we will have black beans, bell peppers and rice with eggs and cheese. My mouth is watering already. After lunch we will be getting our ingredients ready so that at 4pm we just need to put them together and cook them.
Once you have chosen the recipes you are interested in you can substitute for ingredients you either don’t like or don’t have. The Roasted Red Pepper Triangles recipe uses crescent dough, which I don’t have, but I do have some puff pastry and phyllo pastry in the freezer that both need to be used so I will use one of them.
I like to cook with my family because it has become our bonding time. We all prepare a different dish or work together on a one dish meal, and start washing dishes as we work so we have fewer to do after dinner. This family meal preparation habit took time to develop so the earlier you start it with your children the easier it is to keep doing as they get older. It is a positive time for all of us. We have a small kitchen so we have learned to work well in confined spaces and help each other out. When I am cooking alone I play great music and sing and dance as I prepare our meal.
At the end of our meal we give our menu items a thumbs up or thumbs down so we know whether or not we want to make it again. Then we clean up.
This is our dinner routine and yours is likely similar. You go through this process every day and you have managed to keep yourself alive, proof that you have at least a basic proficiency in working towards a goal.
Next week I will share with you how your dinner process can be applied to working towards one of your dream goals, and that my dear, will make all the difference in the world to your life!
You can do this!
With all my love,
Velvet
Living with More Joy, one step and one dinner at a time.
It’s Oprah’s fault we are living our dream life! Paradise Found. Photo credit: Velvet Rollin. October 1999.
April 23, 2021
I could not sleep last night. Why? Because I was thinking about the book I am writing. My book is about creating More Joy for your life. One big focus area in my book is guiding people to identify what their dream life looks like, sounds like and feels like, and then helping them develop a plan so they can work towards their dream life one step at a time.
Seemingly unconnected to the above thoughts, one of the exercises in the author’s course I am taking has you identify your expertise – why you have the expertise required to be the author of your book. This exercise took me back to the start of the journey I am currently on. In 1998 I was a mom with two children under 5, I was working part-time and I was very unhappy. I didn’t know who I was anymore, I had lost “me” in becoming a wife and mother. I had a wonderful husband and two great children, but being a mom is hard, especially when you expect so much of yourself. I felt very ungrateful for what I knew were great blessings. I was miserable.
Enter Oprah.
I was not generally a fan of talk shows, but there were many episodes of Oprah ’s show that were different. They taught me lessons for life, they introduced me to books and authors I had not heard of, they showed me a world I was not aware of. Every episode I watched lifted me to a higher pathway than the one I was on when I “arrived” to the show that day. I love learning and so I loved these episodes.
The Episode that Changed My Life
Sarah Ban Breathnach was a guest on Oprah’s show sometime in January of 1998. I do not know the exact day, but I do know that episode changed my life. I bought Sarah’s book, “Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy”. I can still remember reading the dated entries for the second half of January while I simultaneously “caught up” by reading the entries and completing the activities for early January.
What was my hinge point, the practice that changed the direction of my life?
My Gratitude Journal.
I’m sure many of you have had a similar experience. Keeping a journal of what you are grateful for can change your life if you let it. You become a different person. I remember that in my early days of keeping my gratitude journal I had great difficulty coming up with 5 things to be grateful for at the end of each day. One day, while driving around the city I was living in I remember seeing a banner on a bridge that said, “When you can’t breathe nothing else matters.” It was an ad for a fundraising campaign. I remember thinking, well at least that gives me one thing to be grateful for. Yes, I was that desperate for 5 items for my journal.
Over time my gratitude journal, together with working through Sarah’s book and continuing to learn from Oprah and her guests changed my view on my life and opened my soul to dreaming again. I started swimming with a coach at the local pool. My husband and I talked about the future and our dreams. I believed in dreams again! For the previous three or four years we had a “5 year plan” to move out of the city and build our own alternative home on a country property. Our plan though, was there in title only – we had done nothing to “plan” for our goal and the five year plan never advanced past year one. With Sarah’s book and my newfound outlook on living, that changed.
We clarified our dream. What did we need? What did we want? What were we willing to live without?
The Mountain to our Dream Life
I drew a mountain. At the bottom was where we were, at the top was our vision for the future: having Christmas in our home with our extended family. The year at the top was 2025…I think. I can no longer find that original mountain drawing, but I know I have it here somewhere. I do know I was focussed on how we would feel 25 years in the future…
On the side of the mountain I wrote the things we would have to do to reach our dream, one small step at a time.
Over the following 18 months we followed those steps. We researched the type of property we would need to live self-sustainably, the type of alternative home we wanted to build, what size it would be, what sources of energy we would use, etc.. I started looking at properties. We couldn’t afford to buy property in the area near our city. We talked about what that would mean. It meant leaving our current jobs and looking for work in another area. I started researching job prospects elsewhere. The research results fell into my lap. The best time to move would be just as a large group of people in my profession were retiring so jobs would open up. That would be around the year 2000. Now we had a goal date for buying and living on our property. We planned for a camping trip to an area we liked during the summer of 1999. I contacted a realtor in the area. He kept an eye out for properties that met our requirements and in August 1999 he gave us a list of properties to look at.
We couldn’t find one of the properties on the list. It was getting late so we agreed to meet him the following day. That evening we had a wonderful night of camping, storytelling and roasting marshmallows with our children. Life was bliss.
The next day we met the realtor and followed him to the property. The road it was on was not named. The laneway at the end of it was overgrown. It was obvious it had only been driven on by a farm tractor.
It was a very long laneway, about 1000ft (300m), and it was rough. It ended in a very large field surrounded by trees. It was a hot day. We all got out of the car. The hay in the field was over the kids’ heads. The kids and I investigated near the car while my husband and our realtor walked the property. They were gone a long time.
Where were they?
This was before the days of the cellphone.
The kids and I got back into the car and rolled down all the windows.
About an hour later they came walking back up the laneway.
They had gotten lost, came out of the woods at a neighbour’s property and walked back up the road and the laneway to the field.
We loved the property.
We made an offer and it was accepted.
In January of 1999 we were now the proud owners of the first part of our dream life!
And that is why I could not sleep last night, because we are living our dream life in the home that we built as a family, working with my husband on our property and writing the book I’ve dreamed of writing for years. I have the expertise to write my book because we are living proof that living your dream life is possible. It has taken a lot of planning, a lot of hard work, and one step up our mountain at a time.
And it’s Oprah’s fault!
I would love to read your story of how Oprah or Sarah empowered you to change your life. Please feel free to share it in the comments section below or email it to velvetrollin@gmail.com .
Your Inventory of Joy will help you identify what brings you joy so you live with More Joy. Seafood Chowder, PEI. Photo Credit: Velvet Rollin July 2015
April 16, 2021
I love great food! The whole experience of even remembering a divine visit to a beach side restaurant on Prince Edward Island; ordering, anticipating and then sitting down to enjoy the aromas and tastes of a large bowl of fresh seafood chowder with a fresh baked biscuit brings me joy! I close my eyes and I can see and smell and taste it still. Mmmm! It has been 6 years since I had that bowl of seafood chowder and just the thought of it makes me want to return for another bowl of bliss!
And so it goes…
I wish for you, great gastronomic experiences. One of the ways I make sure I get these great experiences is that I plan for them. We make a monthly menu and include lots of items we love to eat, and a few dinners we would like to try. There are so many great recipes to try online, as well as your favourites from your childhood and young adulthood. What do you love to eat? Put it on your menu, and then put the ingredients for it on your shopping list – then schedule the time to make it. We choose more elaborate meals for weekends when we will have time to enjoy preparing them.
What else brings you joy?
Think of aromas that bring you joy, and not just food, though food is wonderful! If eating is the only activity that brings us joy we are all going to have difficulties keeping healthy, especially those of us who have difficulties losing the weight we gain. I love the smell of jasmine, lilacs, a cedar chest, the woods after a rain, autumn, cinnamon, baking bread, and clothes fresh off the clothesline. Close your eyes for a moment and think about what smells bring you joy.
One of the ways you can increase the joy in your life is to take the time to make a list of everything that brings you joy. To make this easier I have created an Inventory of Joy, which you can find in the Resources section of the dropdown menu. I encourage you to use this resource to create your own Inventory of Joy. Categories include: the smell of…, the taste of…, the feeling of…, the sight of…, the sound of…, as well as favourite things to do, and a list of activities that help you just Be. Another category you could include are books or blogs or magazines you like to read.
What do you do once you have finished your Inventory of Joy, you start living it! I challenge you to choose to do at least one item on your list each day so you are living with More Joy. It won’t take a lot of time, but it will take a little bit of effort each day to remember to do it. Link it to something you already do each day to help you remember. I usually do something from my Inventory of Joy after dinner, it is part of my winding down at the end of the day. Drinking hot chocolate, sitting by the fire and listening to great music are three things I do regularly to bring me joy when the weather is cold or rainy outside.
Please comment below to tell me how you are choosing to live with More Joy each day. I look forward to hearing from you!
Washing dishes can be dreadful or delightful, and you get to choose which experience it will be for you! Washing dishes. Photo credit: Velvet Rollin. April 2021
April 9, 2021
Washing dishes used to be the chore I disliked the most, in fact it was at the top of my Inventory of Dismal (more about that later). Dishes never seem to be finished in our house and they stack up quickly. We do not currently have a dishwasher, it was what I gave up to have the life I wanted…off-grid and earth-bermed. It was my cost of living my dream life, the downside. Some days however the cost seemed too high. My solution, it was time to transform this “dismal” chore into something I could at the very least tolerate or ignore, and at best, enjoy. Well, several years later I can honestly say that dishes are no longer dismal and on some days, like this morning, I can actually admit that I enjoyed doing the dishes.
What is the secret to transforming dismal chores into those you can ocassionally enjoy? First you need to analyse what it is that you dislike about the activity. For me dishes “never” seem to be done, there is “always” a sky high pile of them and they “always” need to be done when I least want to do them, when I am tired after dinner. This I know about myself, after dinner I don’t want to do work. I work hard all day going from activity to activity and once I sit down for dinner exhaustion kicks in. I also know that the sooner dishes are washed after being dirtied the easier they are to wash. This means that I had to develop strategies to decrease what I don’t like about doing dishes. More than that though, the true transformation did not take place until I paired doing dishes with activities that I do enjoy. Let me explain.
To start with I talked with my husband about my intense dislike of washing dishes. Together we decided that he would attempt to do some dishes during the day as they were being dirtied so the pile in the evening was not so high. To be fair, the reason he hadn’t been doing dishes during the day was because years before I instructed him not to because he was trying to build our home and keep our home clean at the same time and was finding he had very little time to do the building because of all the cleaning.
Next we talked about making simple meals some evenings for dinner so that fewer dishes were dirtied. When our children were young my husband used to go away for work two days back to back each week. While he was away the kids and I would have simple meals so the dishes were kept to a minimum – cereal was a common one, as were “great grilled cheeses”. Simple meals, few dishes…my favourites. My husband likes more elaborate meals, but he agreed to make enough so we had leftovers and therefore fewer dishes on day 2 (I love leftovers and I love fewer dishes!).
We talked about doing dishes as we were making dinner so fewer dishes were left to do at the end of the meal. We have gotten really good at this one and it makes a huge difference. Because I worked outside the home he usually has dinner prep duty which means when I get home the first thing I do is start the dishes while he finishes the meal. This often leaves just the pots and the dinner plates to wash after we eat.
All of this was great, but the final transformation, la piece de resistance, was pairing this “dismal” activity with activities that I do enjoy, activities on my Inventory of Joy (getting there). I love dancing and listening to great music. I also like watching shows on a streaming service that other family members don’t want to watch….so now if I am doing dishes in the morning I exercise while listening to great dance music (another dismal to Joy-filled pairing). This one is rather weird because I do High Intensity Interval Training. This means that for 30 seconds I do exercise, and then for 45 seconds I wash dishes. Not everyone’s cup of tea I admit, but I did this for me. I use an app that times my intervals and notifies me of when to switch activites so I don’t have to think about it. I also often exercise while I clean the house – deciding to do my HIIT in a specific room so that in the “off” 45 seconds I can do a quick cleaning (wipe down horizontal surfaces with a rag). Soooo easy!
If I am doing dishes later in the day I will pair it with great music, dancing or watching a show on my streaming service. The reward? At the end of the dishes I sit down and enjoy the end of the show I am watching…with no self-imposed guilt! Sweet!
I can honestly say I now have no “dismal” activities and even “look forward” to doing one of these activities because of the guilt-free activities that bring me joy that I do with them! My house is cleaner, I am more fit, and most importantly I experience More Joy everyday! Woohoo!
Some background information:
An Inventory of Dismal is a list of every chore you don’t like to do and perhaps even often avoid.
An Inventory of Joy is a list of everything that brings you joy.
I will elaborate on both of these Inventories on my next couple of blog posts.
Your homework today is to identify your most dismal chore and go through the process I have described to make it an activity you no longer find dismal and ocassionally even experience some joy while doing. Report back in the comments below so we can all learn from the strategies you use to transform your dismal to joy!
The secret to great joy every day is to let it into your heart! Periwinkles. Photo credit: Velvet Rollin May 2020
April 8, 2021
The secret to great joy is to allow God’s wonders to instil His joy deep into your soul! We pass by trees and shrubs and flowers every day. Do we notice them? Do we stop to experience joy with them? Do we talk to them? Do we listen to them? Are we inspired by their majestic clothing, their royal colours, their beautiful veining, their tender stems that yet support, those stripes and spots and pollen and nectar? Are we paying attention?
Go for a ramble as a child would, take your time, wander away, follow your nose, your eyes, your ears, feel with your cheek, your arms, your fingers, your toes…oh remember to feel with your toes! Listen. What do you hear? It does not matter what it is – don’t try to label it – enjoy it, it is a gift, that is all you need to know. Spend five minutes, ten minutes, thirty minutes, noticing the gifts surrounding you in the natural world. Reflect on this time, journal about it, what did you enJOY the most? What touches your soul? Is it a smell, a colour, a sound? Acknowledge it, thank God for it, continue to experience wonder for it. Say hello, and plan to say hello to it again tomorrow. Enrich its life and let it enrich yours. This is the gift of today, the secret to great joy today, and every day. Be open to new experiences, to letting the wonders of our natural world enrich yours. You are rich, you just have to see your world and your life with new eyes, new ears, a new nose and a new, more grateful heart! There is always something to be grateful for, in the hardest of times there is always something to be grateful for!
The secret to great joy is letting the joy that is already in the world into our heart!
Make it a great day, for you, and for those you meet on your Journey of Joy!
Climbing Machu Picchu was a dream come true! Machu Picchu. Photo credit: Velvet Rollin. August 11, 2017.
September 11, 2017
Machu Picchu. This was likely our last big family trip, so we made it special – Peru and Machu Picchu. It took months to plan it, and days preparing for the elevation so we would not get ill. I had intended to physically prepare for months as well, but that did not happen…so I was worried. My first lesson of our trip is that there comes a time when you have to just start walking. You can plan all you wish, but if at some point you don’t stop planning and start doing you will never reach your dreams. Yes I was not as fit as I would have wished, but frankly the planning I did to get us ready for the elevation, also served to prepare us for Machu Picchu. I booked Machu Picchu for day 4 of 5 days at elevation. We stayed in Cusco, a city built on the side of mountains so there were stairs and steep inclines everywhere. Every day we walked the city and ruins in the area. I took it slow, but was able to do them. This was my preparation.
During our Machu Picchu climb I learned my second lesson, we never accomplish our goals alone. We had arranged for a private guide for this tour and our guide was Cosme Cuba Gutierrez. I believe that part of what he did in the first few minutes we were with him was assess our abilities and interests so he could ensure our tour was everything we wished it to be. He told us he was going to take us to the highest areas first while we were our freshest and so we could get the best views of the city. Then we would climb down and explore the city. The way to the highest areas had a long lineup, which meant that we were moving slowly and did not feel tired or out of breath. On our way Cosme told us of the rich history of the Incas, Cusco and Machu Picchu. Cosme’s interest in meeting our needs ensured it was a wonderful experience for all of us.
Reflecting on this experience I know that if I continue to focus on the needs of the people I am serving in my dream work area I will be successful. I also know I have been using “planning” to avoid “doing” in this area of my life – so that is what I need to work on.
What have you learned on one of your journeys in life?
Pause and experience small joys on your journey! Snails and Barnacles. Costa Rica. Photo credit: Velvet Rollin. August 2016.
July 27, 2017
It has been a year since my husband and I travelled to Costa Rica. What a wonderful trip that was, both our grand experiences ziplining, white water rafting and climbing a volcano, but also, and more especially for us, the fruits sampled from street vendors, the ceviche created by independent restauranteurs, ocean creatures we discovered while walking and snorkelling, and the conversations with the local people and guides. My husband and I enjoy spending time with local people, learning more about their culture and food, and practicing our skills with their language. They are rich experiences!
The greatest blessing of our trip however, was how we experienced Canada when we returned. We enjoyed all of our experiences in Costa Rica, but on the west side of the country during their wet season, it looks very much like much the central part of Canada. Looking at its landscapes from far away you cannot tell the difference. So, when we returned we were determined to enjoy Canada, and our small corner of it, as if we were tourists. Now this was not a great stretch for us because we moved outside Holland Centre in Grey County 17 years ago because of what the area offers, but we do enjoy the little things more. You’ll have to forgive me for bragging about our local area, but you should also know that none of these businesses know I am bragging about them, and I am not getting any benefits for doing so. As you will see, the benefits are available to everyone equally. This summer we have enjoyed kayaking on the Sauble River, a river that flows nicely all on its own so that if you want to just float down the river you can and still make good time. And while we were there we stopped by the Southampton Olive Oil Company to buy my favourite, Coconut Balsamic Vinegar (don’t even bother buying coconut vinegar from the grocery store, it is not even close). You can try every product before you buy and this year I added a Lemon Balsamic because it was so good (I do have a few other flavours, but these are my current favourites).
Throughout the summer we enjoy ice cream at our local gas station, the Holland Centre Gas Bar (Canadians have been enjoying ice cream scooped at gas stations for generations and we continue to enjoy that tradition here in the country), where we buy a “baby” cone for $1.50. These cones are so big that my husband and I share one and we still have to ask them to stop adding ice cream to the cone so we don’t waste it. The ice cream is made in Markdale, Ontario by Chapman’s Ice Cream, a mere 20 minute drive from our house yet available to and enjoyed by tourists and Canadians across the country. How great is that!
We sit outside and enjoy our 49 acres of paradise at breakfast, lunch and dinner if it is not raining (it has been a little wet this summer). I love the rain…even this summer when we have had a lot of it and the yard still squishes when we walk on it. When you keep in mind that we need the rain as much as the sun the term “liquid sunshine” (taught to me by a dear friend) helps you keep it in perspective. I love the sound of it as well so no issues there.
We weed our raised bed garden (yes you really should try it, much easier to weed than a regular garden) and we continue to finish building our house. It has been 15 years and counting, but we love creating our paradise – 1600 square feet of joy…yes we are building it ourselves and no, nothing is conventional. I think I’ll save the details of that joy for a blog post another day!
As you can see, I love the little things that bless my life. I think the biggest part of that is that I notice these small blessings. I live with a grateful heart and I acknowledge the blessings I have. You might think from this that I have never had challenges and that I have always lived life this way. Neither are true. I will not share my personal story with challenges, because I also acknowledge that we all have our challenges, whether the outside world knows about them or not. I will however share with you that what changed my life was an Oprah show. Oprah herself changed my life, but it started with the show when she invited Sarah Ban Breathnach to talk about her new book, “Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy”. In that book Sarah highly recommended keeping a gratitude journal, and I did. I was not very grateful when I started because I was in a very dark place in my life at the time. That journal changed my life and I will be forever grateful to Sarah for writing her book, and to Oprah for introducing me to it. Simple steps that changed my life.
So, take a step towards experiencing the small joys on your journey, look at your local community as a tourist would – and go out and make today a great day!
Velvet :-)
2021 update: The Holland Centre Gas bar stopped selling scooped ice cream in 2019, we were very sad as were other friends of ours who went there regularly. The end of a tradition.
Look for the bright spots in your life and move forward from there. Eating well and loving it! Photo credit: Velvet Rollin, July 2015.
March 19, 2017
Reviewing your vision of a joy-filled life, where can you see that you are already living that part of your dream life…or with a couple of tweaks could be living that part of your dream life? Are you already getting up early to do something just for you, to bring you joy? Perhaps you are already preparing the next day’s lunches the night before so that your morning is not rushed and you can enjoy your children or spouse. Maybe you plan a week’s worth of dinner menus so that whoever gets home first knows what to do to get dinner started for the family so all runs smoothly. Do you meditate some days, but not everyday?
A bright spot is an area of your life you feel is going well, in our case a part of your dream life you are already living. If you start with a part of your dream that you are already on your way to accomplishing you are more likely to be able to turn it into a habit that you no longer have to think about…and that is when it becomes automatic and you can focus on the next part of your vision. Working towards your vision of a joy-filled life is a long term project, it is likely to take years to get there, but those years are going to pass by anyway so you might as well be working towards your dreams over that time. I like to set 5 year goals, but they are flexible – as in, I don’t get hung up by the timeline, I just use it to plan for my goals. There are a lot of events in life that get in the way of reaching our goals within a certain time frame, but as long as I am moving forward I don’t worry about it. In 1997 my husband and I had a dream of moving to the country and building our own off-grid, earth-bermed home. It was a 5 year plan. We bought our property in 1999, moved there at the end of June 2000, started building in the Spring of 2001 and have been living in our home since July of 2002. Yes, it looks like we were able to reach our goal within 5 years. Did I mention that we built the house ourselves, with the help of friends as volunteers? Did I mention that we are still finishing our house? Did I mention that part way through building our house my husband decided he wanted to raise meat rabbits…so for 2 years we were working on our house and building a bunny barn? Did I mention that we have also built a 40′ X 46′ raised bed garden and planted fruit trees, and planned a couple of ponds? Did I mention we were raising 2 boys and joined a new Church which both my husband and I have large callings in while we were building our house? Did I mention I was working full-time and my husband was working part-time for most of the last 16 years since we started this journey. Everything takes time and we did not feel we wanted to put our lives on hold to finish the house – so, most of it is complete, but we don’t let it get in the way of life. We noticed by February of 2002 that our lives were severely out of balance and we were sacrificing our family relationships to finish the house. That was when we decided to put family first. It was the right choice. We don’t have door frames, but we have fun with our children and visit family (3 and 5 hours away) many times a year. We knew the sad statistics going into our building project, 50% of couples break up during the process of building their own home, we did not want to be one of those couples.
Our dream has come true, even if the house is not finished. But I want to tell you one more thing: dreams come and dreams go. We have other dreams we also want to work towards and so we are: dreams of me retiring before July 9, 2021 – which is my current retirement date; dreams of serving a mission for our Church; dreams of travelling; dreams of making a bigger difference in the world; dreams of spending more time with family and friends; dreams of running retreats to help others live their dreams; dreams of publishing a number of books currently in my head and on my computer. The same will happen to you, you will not be finished with one dream when another arrives and waits for you to pick it up. These dreams are potential choose-your-own adventures, and it is okay to go for them, not go for them, or start down a road towards one of them and then decide the time is not right and leave it for a while. There is not one potential fulfilling life waiting for you and all the others lead to disappointment, there are many possible paths that can lead you to a fulfilling life if you let it. Stop perseverating about this choice or that choice…if they are all positive choices, just choose one and go down that adventurous road for a while and see how you like it.
Your challenge for this week is to identify the part of your vision of a joy-filled life that you are already partially living…your bright spot…and make it brighter, live it more fully so it becomes a habit, becomes automatic, and so you can move on to the next part of your vision.
My husband and I were married in 1997, 29 years ago. We honeymooned in Jamaica. Before this past summer we had not been away together…sans children…since that honeymoon.
Our vacation came at my insistence. My husband does not like crowds and likes our property and home. We have tried a couple of “staycations” and while there were moments of joy, by and large I found that we worked more than we vacationed. All work and no play definitely make me a grumpy girl. In the summer of 2015 my husband still wanted to get things “done” and after taking 5 courses in 15 months while still working full time I needed to get away. The ocean has always beckoned to me and feeds my soul and so my best friend and I went out East for 10 days. It worked and I was ready for another year.
I have a busy job with little down time and five years left until I retire. This past year there was a lot of labour unrest, meaning even more work for those of us not withdrawing services. I had little time to connect with my husband outside of vacation time. Having been married this long because I love him, I prefer if we remain married while I finish out my career and so I told him that if he wanted me to last another 5 years we needed to go away. He agreed. I did some research, ordered a tour book and a map, booked with an online tour company (Pacific Trade Winds…they were amazing! This is not a sponsored post.) after fully checking them out.
On August 8th we flew out for 10 days of “us” time. We needed it. We enjoyed different parts of our trip…me the cooler mountain air – 18-25 degrees Celsius, and he the hot coast – 32 degrees Celsius. We both loved the scenery, the plants and animals, the friendly and helpful people, the fresh fruit, the seafood, the hikes, and the swimming and snorkelling in the ocean. The most common question we were asked was if this was our first trip to Costa Rica. We knew why. If it weren’t for wanting to see other countries in the world we would go back again and again.
We did not travel so called “first class”, but all of our tours and experiences were amazing. We did not stay in 5 star hotels, but every hotel was clean, comfortable and the staff friendly and helpful. We stayed in towns or nearby and mingled with the people of Costa Rica. We were enriched by their presence. I have vertigo and it affects me most during the heat of the summer. Rough mountain roads do not help. Although it was always in the background and I had to take medication and rest to keep it at bay, I did not have an attack during our trip, it did not stop me from experiencing many moments of joy.
By the time our 10 days were coming to an end my husband did not want to leave Costa Rica…success and relief! Next summer we plan to take our children to Peru, on what we believe will be our last “family” trip as our children are now 22 and 21 and have lives of their own. We have not had a family trip away since we drove out West to British Columbia in 2008…again, it has been too long.
After our trip to Peru we will plan our next couple vacation, likely something closer and simpler again, maybe a tour of culinary Quebec and stays in some historical homes that are now Bed and Breakfast establishments. This is the start of something good.
My advice to others out there…don’t wait until your children are grown to vacation together as a couple again. You need to invest time in your relationship – yearly vacations, weekly dates, daily check ins. Your monetary investment can be small (we used to go camping and will again), but it is essential to creating More Joy in your marriage.
I’m beginning to think I might make it to retirement after all!
You can choose More Joy even during challenging times in your life. Our first retreat. Photo credit: Velvet Rollin, July 2006.
October 16, 2016
Living a life filled with More Joy is a choice you make every moment of every day. It is not always an easy choice, but it is a better choice. Most of us have challenging circumstances which we navigate daily, whether they involve people or loneliness, events or boredom, too little time or too little money. Part of the reason we feel this way is because we get so caught up in the challenges of the moment…focusing on our lives at the microscopic level, that we forget to pull back and view our lives today within the perspective of our lives as a whole – where we are today, challenges and all, compared to where we were 1, 5 or 10 years ago. Whether or not we are ahead materially, what matters is if we have moved forward in our development into the person we want to be. Are we kinder to others, less judgemental, than we used to be? Do we reach out and help those in need, or do we walk by, pretending they do not exist? Do we reflect on and express gratitude for the blessings in our lives? Do we serve others? Are we making a difference in the world especially as we focus on reaching out to one person at a time?
In my experience the more we focus on our own problems the more miserable we feel, whereas the more we focus on reaching out and helping others the better we feel. I started the More Joy journey because I noticed that I was not the only woman who felt lonely even though we were very busy people in helping careers. We did not have down time, time to build relationships with compatible peers so we could become friends. I could have chosen to feel sorry for myself…and for a while I did, but instead of choosing to live there I decided to do something about it. I decided to organise More Joy Retreats. I organise them to serve the women around me – to help them acknowledge the joy already in their lives and create opportunities for More Joy. I help them dream again, and then take steps towards those dreams. Together we keep each other on track by meeting every two weeks to report on our progress to one another. It is not difficult, but it is fulfilling and has made a difference in the lives of the women around me. Have I helped them – yes! Have they helped me – yes, and our relationships are deeper and more meaningful. We are there for each other in our challenges, and we try to keep each other from living in the pit of despair. We are choosing joy, and helping each other continue to choose joy. We help each other remember that we are of infinite worth to this world and that we can make a difference in the lives of those around us. We lift each other up and lift others as well. We are choosing to focus on our blessings even while in the midst of challenges. We look for the lesson in our challenges…and there are lessons in every challenge, whether they are of our own making or not.
In every experience of service I have participated in, whether piling firewood, watching over the children of a young mother in distress, or organising and running retreats, I have benefited from the service as much as those I have served. We sing and dance while we work, laugh so hard it hurts (what a great feeling to laugh that hard again!), we forget our troubles, we feel good about ourselves again and we build, strengthen and deepen relationships. So choose More Joy, there is really only despair to lose and everything to gain!
Why do I want to live in a small cabin? The 5 whys exercise can help us understand what root desires the components of our joy-filled lives represent. Photo Credit: Lilac Bedroom at Suzie’s Cottage. Velvet Rollin, 2013.
August 3, 2016
Now comes some harder thinking, some analysing of your joy-filled life. It is important to go through this exercise to get to a deeper understanding of what you are truly looking for in your life.
In order to do this analysis you progressively ask yourself the question Why? five times in relation to one or more items in your joy-filled life description.
In the space below I will first analyse my joy-filled life, and then I will give you an example of a common item people might include in their joy-filled life.
My Joy-filled Life analysed using the 5 Whys Exercise
Why do I want to live in a small cabin? A small cabin symbolizes simplicity to me, that I have been able to let go of all the extra “stuff” in my life. A small cabin also symbolizes a lower cost of living and less time spent on cleaning & maintenance, in both the short and long term.
Why do I want simplicity, less stuff and lower costs? Well, to me a simpler life and less stuff mean greater freedom to live where I want and do what I want. Fewer costs mean that I don’t have to make as much money in order to live the way I want to live. I have found that I can save money faster by following the strategy of spending less of what I currently make rather than by figuring out how I can make more money.
Why is a cheaper, simpler life important to me? Well, it means that I can afford to quit a higher paying job in order to move in a new direction in my life without the perceived threat to my brain that I won’t be able to live on a smaller income. It ultimately means more freedom to do what I want to do, which at this time in my life is spending more time outside in nature and writing, both of which bring me great joy, and more exercise, which my body needs.
Why do I want to spend more time in nature and to write? Both bring me great joy! More exercise would help me improve my health. Switching careers would also result in greater health, I have only been on holidays for 2 weeks and my physiotherapist said my body is in much better condition than it has been all year! I have also not had the chronic headaches and back pain that accompany me when I am working…might be a connection there. Until I can stop working a priority for me will be to keep my work from affecting my body’s health negatively.
Why do I want to experience great joy? It’s what I live for…no one wants to be unhappy so I need to make sure that whatever I do in life, even if it is not a step towards a specific detail in my joy-filled life, that it is always towards More Joy. This is not to say I will not work towards the larger dream, only that sometimes I won’t have the time or energy for the bigger dream, and will have to ensure I create More Joy in a small way in the meantime.
You’ll notice I have only analysed one piece of my joy-filled life…why I wanted to live in a cabin. There will be several items in my joy-filled life that will distil down to wanting More Joy in my life and after I have done this with the cabin I should be able to identify those others similar pieces. There will be other points however, that will not be so clear and I recommend you go through the 5 Whys exercise to help you determine their role in your joy-filled life. This will give you a more rounded understanding of what you want for your life and why. It is important to understand the whys of what you want because you might actually be able to meet that underlying need in a way you hadn’t previously thought of, and you might be able to meet that need in a simpler way than you think. For instance if your joy-filled life included travelling the world have you considered a career where you travel as part of your job or travelling and living like the locals at your destinations…both would be rich in experiences that other ways of travel might not offer.
Money: If money appeared in your joy-filled life it is very important to figure out why it is there, what role it is playing. A lot of people have complicated relationships with money and until you figure out what that relationship is it can get in the way of you living a joy-filled life. It is important to see money as a means to an end, and not an end in itself. Why do you want a specific amount of money…or more money than you could possibly spend in your lifetime? If you want lots of money so you don’t have to worry about it for the rest of your life understand that many rich people have as many or more money worries than those with less money…the more you have the more you worry about losing. If you want money so you can spend your life helping people then you are in fact letting money get in the way of you helping people…because you can help people now…don’t let a lack of money worries stop you. Also realise that helping others is one of the best ways to put your own life challenges in perspective, decrease your focus on yourself, decrease your worries and live a joy-filled life. If you want money so you have specific experiences in life reflect on other ways you can meet that need. If you want money to pay down your debts realize that there are a great number of things you can do today, with the amount you make now, to decrease your debts.
Have you considered losing everything? A few years ago friends of ours were attempting to complete the building of their custom environmentally-friendly home. The costs were already double what the original estimate had been and it was only half completed. Their home-based business was thriving and expanding, but even one biological disaster could send them spiralling downward. At the time they were going through these challenges we had a discussion about the positive side of losing everything. Sometimes losing everything is a blessing in disguise as it gives you the opportunity to start over with a clean slate. You get to walk away from all the stress and heartache of the previous few years of being in over your head, and show your children that having nothing can actually be freeing when compared to what was being experienced by your entire family before.
Owning a house is not always the answer to money woes because the cost of owning can be much higher than the cost of renting when you take into account all costs. When you add in the lack of mobility caused by owning a home in a particular area, it does not often make sense for those just getting by, or those who would consider moving for a better job prospect. “Your Money or Your Life” by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin is a great resource to help you make these types of decisions.
Okay, your turn. Use the 5 whys exercise to analyse your joy-filled life, then share in the comments area something you think would be useful for others to know based on your analysis.
Suggested Readings:
Both “Voluntary Simplicity” by Duane Elgin and “Your Money or Your Life” by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin are highly suggested reads for you if you wish to walk the path to a simpler life. Both were life-changing for me and resulted in being able to pay off all my debts quickly, keep from buying more “stuff” and let go of “stuff” I already had.
In my joy-filled life I live by the ocean in a simple one room off-grid cabin with with my husband. Photo credit: Sky, Field and Ocean. North Shore PEI. Velvet Rollin, 2015.
July 29, 2016
In my joy-filled life I live by the ocean because I have always felt drawn to water. I live in a simple one room off-grid cabin with a loft (for guests) with my husband. Our boys and their families come and visit us often. My husband and I swim and walk along the beach, and I write from my covered porch overlooking the ocean or from the room just behind it in rainy or cold weather. We have a woodstove which we sit in front of every morning as we plan our day together. We have 2 clotheslines, one inside over the woodstove and one outside (I love fresh laundry off the line). We live on the East Coast of Canada, and some winters we go away to warmer areas because my husband is getting older and does not want to have to clear the snow anymore. In winters when we stay home we make sure we have enough stored food and fuel that we do not have to leave our home if we don’t want to.
In my joy-filled life I am writing books and leading retreats for women seeking more from life.
I wear clothes that bring me joy. They are soft and warm and flowing. I would love to say I make them, but at this point in my life it would bring me more joy to buy the material, use the pattern I love, and pay someone else to make the dress.
I seek knowledge from everyone I meet online and in person because I know everyone has talents and knowledge and joy to share.
My husband and I are living our dream lives together. He is following his dreams as I am following mine, and we are also following common dreams together. It is important to us that much of our dream lives are shared so our focus is on supporting each other. We talk openly, honestly and kindly.
My children are following their dreams and loving what they do.
We have lots of visitors, people with whom we choose to share our lives. People on the same journey we are. Positive people. People who are seeking something more, and are finding it…and creating it.
Stay tuned, tomorrow I will ask you to further analyse your joy-filled life by completing the 5 Whys exercise…
What would your joy-filled life look like, sound like and feel like? Who would you spend it with, where would you be and what would you do? Photo credit: Skyline Trail, BC. Sheena Stacey, 2008. Used with permission.
July 27, 2016
What if overnight a miracle occurred and your life was filled with joy? Not just a little joy mind you, but every moment of every day were filled with joy. What would a joy-filled life look like, sound like, and feel like…in your heart, mind, body and home? Who would be there and what would you be doing?
Imagine this scene in detail and jot your thoughts down in a journal. You may wish to describe a day in your new life from the time you wake until the time you go to bed at night OR you could create a collage with images from the internet showing what would be included in your day.
Once you have finished your reflection on your joy-filled life, review it and in the comments area below share one of your observations about your joy-filled life.
Welcome to your journey with More Joy, a journey we will take together. Incidentally, More Joy is not our destination, it is the way we will choose to travel to the destination we decide to walk towards. I look forward to travelling with you, and learning from you as you learn from me.
My next blog will let you in on what my joy-filled life would look like.
More Joy: Inspiration from Music
Music brings me joy and helps me get beyond the perseverating my mind sometimes does with negative events or conversations in my life. Sometimes the lyrics are what I connect to, and other times it is the tune.
Years ago Eric Robertson and Roger Whittaker wrote “A Day in the Life of a Lucky Man“. In that song they described a perfect day in one man’s life. I have always loved that song because it is obvious from the lyrics that they are grateful for the blessings in what could be viewed as a “regular day” in the life of a family. My only wish is that Roger would have sung the lyrics instead of speaking them, but alas, we can’t have everything in life can we…or can we?
With love and joy in the life of a lucky woman,
Velvet
If this reflection brought a quiet moment of joy, let’s keep walking this path together — pausing, noticing, and finding wonder in the everyday.
I am grateful for a family that can turn work (building a pig shelter), into joy-filled experiences…like a campout and reading! Photo credit: Pig Shelter Building Day; Velvet Rollin, 2006.
Our lives are a treasure hunt and we are surrounded by treasures that will bring us joy if only we would recognize them. I live everyday grateful for the many blessings I have in my life: a family I love and who love me, friends who hug me, and a home in the middle of nowhere with nature all around me. My life has had its challenges, but I have been able to find the blessings in those challenges.
So why am I here, and why are you here? Well, I am here because I want you to be able to find the treasures of joy in your life that are waiting to be recognized by you. I want you to see the blessings in your challenges, and I want you to actively create More Joy for your life.
Welcome to Living with More Joy, where I hope to learn as much from you as you do from me. In order for that to happen you are going to have to participate by commenting on my posts, providing examples of how you have enacted what I talk about in that week’s post. Together, all of us can give each other ideas for additional ways to live our lives with More Joy. “Our blog” will only be as valuable as we make it together!
There was a time in my life when I was in a severe depression. I felt numb, beyond feeling. I was a young mom with a wonderful husband, a job, a 3 year old and a 2 year old..and I was miserable. I did not recognize and was not grateful the blessings in my life. I remember seeing a guest on Oprah one day, Sarah Ban Breathnach, who encouraged viewers to keep a gratitude journal. I decided to do it. Early in those days I remember driving around the city I lived in one day and seeing a banner across a bridge that said, “When you can’t breathe, nothing else matters.” In my mind I thought, “I suppose I am grateful I can breathe.” It was an interesting start to what has been a life-changing, joy-filled journey.
My challenge to you as you begin your journey to Living with More Joy, is to start a gratitude journal. Your journal can be a small notebook from a dollar store which you decorate, or a few blank pieces of paper folded in half and sewn between a piece of beautiful scrapbook paper. Your journal cover can then be decorated with more scrapbook paper, a title, an uplifting quote, and a few of the many scrapbook stickers you may have bought (as I have) for the as yet unstarted scrapbooks you intended to make your family. Use a ribbon to attach a pen you love to your journal. Place your journal on your night table if you have one, or under your pillow if you do not.
Every morning before you get up, or if you have to, every night before you go to bed, make a list of 3 things you are grateful for. They can be big or small events that happened the day before, people in your life, any aspect of your health that is going well, or anything else you can think of – the purple weed/flower you saw on the side of the road and picked on the way home from work yesterday for instance – almost anything purple brings me joy! Even if you don’t believe keeping a gratitude journal will make a difference in your life, do it, eventually you will recognize how this one simple daily act changes the way you think, and changes your perspective on the day ahead and on your life.
Make today a great day!
Velvet
If this reflection brought a quiet moment of joy, let’s keep walking this path together — pausing, noticing, and finding wonder in the everyday.
Living with More Joy 